Last 30 days saw a spate of cyberattacks: Schumer | Long Island Business News

September saw a spade of cyberattacks, including the one that hit Suffolk County, and federal officials must do more to protect consumers, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said Sunday.

American Airlines, DoorDash, Uber and U-Haul have all been hacked, and experienced “a serious data breach,” according to Schumer.

And he said many people may not know their data may have been compromised.

“In roughly the last 30 days, vital and personal information has been hacked at many major U.S. companies, compromising people’s privacy. Yet, if you ask most people about these hacks they don’t even know they occurred and the feds are saying very little,” Schumer said in a statement.

“In fact, for a lot of consumers, unless you have a service—which often comes at a cost—you are not aware of these breaches and hacks,” he added. “And in some cases, even if you do have a service that alerts you, information about where your personal information went, the origin of the hack and so much more is elusive.”

Now Schumer is calling on the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to better protect  consumers.

“The feds have a law on the books to glean more information on major hacks, so the message today is: give consumers the details and investigate who is hacking,” Schumer said. “If a company is not doing right by their customers’ very personal information, then hold them to account as well. That is the two-pronged message today.”

On Sept. 8 Suffolk websites and web-based applications were taken down, after officials found malware in county systems. Ransomware postings on the website DataBreaches.net showed images of county documents and the hackers claimed to have extracted court records, sheriff’s office records, contracts with the state, and personal data of citizens from the domain of the county clerk.

Schumer said the county “has been communicating with federal law enforcement, and is working to fully restore its computer system without threat. My team will continue coordinating with the county to help them however we can, but for a local government to have to shut down computer systems in an effort to protect data, that is not something we want happening anywhere. The feds should detail who exactly hacked Suffolk, what info they got and detail what tools we can give Long Island so this doesn’t happen again.”

“I just secured robust federal dollars to help prevent this exact kind of thing on behalf of our local governments,” Schumer said, referring to the $1 billion infrastructure bill.

That funding would allow government to build comprehensive cyber plans and to use federal grant dollars to support state and local public health, education, and other entities, Schumer said.

The Department of Homeland Security with the Federal Emergency Management Administration recently announced the opportunity for state and local entities to apply for the cybersecurity dollars.